"Why Being A Superhero Only Works As a Childlike, Childhood Dream"

(Ruby Astari)

I’ve always been rather an unusual girl, ever since I was little. Well, at least according to people who (claim to?) know me.

Why superheroes? Well, you could blame it on my undying love for fiction. I grew up reading mythologies, war stories, and watching cartoons about superheroes. (Too many to mention.) Some people might connect this with the fact that I’m a tomboy, but actually there’s more to it than that.

First of all, I don’t always like the costumes that most female superheroes are wearing. (Nothing personal, just my idealism.) I still hate how they’re still portrayed as mere ‘objects’ despite their abilities. (Ugh.) However, the idea of being a superhero is appealing. Not only you get to have superpowers (well, mostly), but you also get to help a lot of people. Not to mention that if you had superpowers, who’d want to bully you? (Unless they’re aliens from some random galaxy or monsters – just like in fiction!)

It would be the wildest dream come true, but then again – we live in the real world. Being a superhero only works as a childlike, childhood dream because:

1.We’re only human. (Isn’t that way too obvious already?)

2.We have our limits. (No kidding.) We may feel like we’re strong enough to conquer the world on our own all the time (especially when we’re young!) However, we also need to accept reality that sometimes we feel tired. Sometimes we need a break. (After all, that’s what holidays are for, right?)

3.We have our own lives to live. It sounds almost the same as the previous point. Being 100% selfless or a perfect Samaritan sounds way too good to be true. We’re no angels. Even the nicest, most helpful ones can get fed up – especially if they have tolerated a lot.

We still have our family, friends, partners, work, etc. to deal with. In fact, sometimes all we need to be away from the real world is – that’s right! – ourselves.

For some people, this kind of reality is still too hard to take. There are people in our lives that we love the most, that we’d sometimes like to do everything for. We often feel bad when we can’t, whatever the reason may be.

There are also people who still demand that we do more than we’re really capable of – and would call us selfish/weaklings/so on for that. Guess what? You’re no God. None of us are.

R.